Conflict and Convergence: U.S.-Soviet Academic Exchange during the Cold War (1960-1970s)

• In Event: Between Cooperation and Conflict: Imagining the American and Soviet 'Other'

Abstract

This research grapples with the U.S.-Soviet academic exchange during the Cold War (1960s-1970s). In particular, it focuses on the often-overlooked “citizen” aspect of the so-called citizen diplomacy, meaning how academic exchange organizations, administrators, and participants interpreted the goals of academic cross-border engagement. By focusing on the programs administered by the IREX and the Fulbright U.S.-USSR lecturers exchange, it re-evaluates the view of academic exchange as being just another strand of American (and Soviet) Cold War diplomacy and/or propaganda and reframes the so-called “cultural Cold War” as a paradoxical mix of cooperation and conflict, where a myriad of motives, factors, and interpersonal contacts both within and outside of the state realm shaped the U.S. view of the Soviet “Other.” Thus, it emphasizes the multiple levels – state, non-state organizational, and individual of U.S.-Soviet academic engagement and how they coexisted, while elucidating class, gender, and intellectual aspects of the transnational contact.

Author

• Iana Shchetinskaia, SUNY Binghamton